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![Now and Then [Single] Image](https://static.metacritic.com/images/products/music/9/438dabf096a68f94c314004315fd79cb-98.jpg)
- Summary:
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- Record Label: Captiol
- Genre(s): Pop/Rock
- More Details and Credits »
Score distribution:
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Positive: 6 out of 7
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Mixed: 1 out of 7
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Negative: 0 out of 7
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Nov 2, 2023McCartney gives Lennon’s vocals space and prominence, blending his own voice sensitively into that wondrous brotherly harmony we thought we’d never hear afresh again. The lyrics – while reading like a typical holding-pattern Lennon love song until greater inspiration stuck – resonate now after 40 years of loss. .... “Now and Then” is the musical event of the year and one of the greatest tear-jerkers in history.
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Nov 2, 2023The song’s beginning will be breathtaking for fans: It opens with a familiar Beatles count-in, following by classic Lennonesque piano chords and a strummed acoustic guitar, and then — that voice, pristine, singing “I know it’s true, it’s all because of you,” and following an unmistakably Lennon melody. .... In the end, “Now and Then” is not a lost Beatles classic. But to paraphrase McCartney’s famous quote regarding criticism of the “White Album,” “It’s a bloody new Beatles song, shut up!”
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Nov 2, 2023Now And Then, the last Beatles song has finally arrived, and it’s more than worth the wait.
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Nov 2, 2023Listening to Now and Then, it’s hard to see what Harrison’s objection was in purely musical terms. A moody, reflective piano ballad, it’s clearly never going to supplant Strawberry Fields Forever or A Day in the Life in the affections of Beatles fans, but it’s a better song than Free as a Bird or Real Love. And posthumously reworked as a Beatles track, it definitely packs a greater emotional punch.
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Nov 2, 2023Maybe it’s the sentimental Beatle-maniac in us, but ‘Now And Then’ feels like something beautiful, something to cherish.
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Nov 2, 2023The finished track simplifies Lennon’s emotional give-and-take; it edits out his misgivings about himself. .... As in many Beatles songs, “Now and Then” has an unexpected closing flourish: a decisive, syncopated string phrase. And low in the mix, after a final shake of a tambourine, a voice says, “Good one!” Like the other posthumous Beatles tracks, “Now and Then” leans into nostalgia. Its existence matters more than its quality.
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Nov 2, 2023There are lovely instrumental passages, lustrous strings, and it has all been crafted with love and care, but it doesn’t hit the heights we expect from a great Beatles ballad, ending up sounding like a poor imitation of genius, the kind of soft rock whimsy you’d find on thousands of second-rate Beatle influenced albums in the Seventies.